Rates of death by suicide continue to increase across the United States. Mental health clinicians often have contact with individuals expressing suicidal ideation, but research suggests clinicians may not be appropriately prepared to assess a client’s suicide risk. Numerous models and theories explain and assess suicidal ideation. In 2009, Thomas Joiner and his colleagues proposed the interpersonal-psychological theory of suicide (IPT), which focused on three main factors strongly supported by research over the preceding decade. The present study utilized a nonconcurrent, multiple-baseline, multiple-probe design as well as a one-group pretest–posttest design to examine the impact of an IPT-based training model. Participants were preservice mental health clinicians currently enrolled in Master’s degree programs. Participants completed assessments on IPT knowledge and suicide-assessment self-efficacy, and results from this study indicated a significant increase in knowledge after completion of the training, as well as a slight decrease in self-efficacy. This study suggests that suicide-assessment training, even when done remotely, can increase suicide-assessment knowledge. Future research should explore preservice mental health clinicians’ self-efficacy as well as those factors influencing the confidence these professionals feel in their assessments of risk.
Training Preservice Mental Health Counselors for Suicide Assessment: A Multiple Baseline Study
